CES Trendspotting – Inconspicuous Innovation

The pace of technological change is exponential and accelerating, and the results are hiding in plain sight. I call it “inconspicuous innovation” and it’s the top trend of 2016. Let’s have a look at some other macro trends that will be on display at CES.

At first glance, CES® 2016 looks a lot like CES 2015. Approximately 3,600 exhibitors will announce approximately 20,000 new products. And while CES 2016 is set to be the largest, most diverse yet — there aren’t too many (if any) groundbreaking, game-changing or revolutionary (choose your hyperbole) new products. TVs are a little bigger, a little thinner, a little less or a little more curved, have slightly better screens, slightly better dynamic range, and slightly better color gamuts. Everything on display has a slightly faster processor, a little more storage, slightly better battery life, a new app, some cloud computing component, is somehow related to IoT, is smart (in some way), and offers slightly better connectivity, etc. “New and improved” features do not generate big headlines, so if your innovation metric is new product announcements (defined as, pro…